A deportation case in New York is getting a lot of attention. As USA Today explains:

A 6-year-old student and her family were deported just before the start of the new school year in New York, a case sparking uproar across the state — including from the governor and officials in the nation’s largest public school system.

The second-grade New York City public school student went with her mother and older brother on Aug. 12 to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in at a federal building in lower Manhattan when agents detained them, a family lawyer told USA TODAY. New York City officials confirmed the student and her mother, who were living in Queens, were deported the morning of Aug. 19.

This is an unfortunate situation, and you, of course, feel especially for the child, but it’s not as though the mother shouldn’t have been fully on notice, or as though she didn’t get her day in court.

More from USA Today:

The student’s mother, Martha, consistently attended check-ins after a deportation order was issued in June 2024 after her family’s asylum application was denied…

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said Martha and two of her children “all received final orders of removal from an immigration judge.” [Emphasis added.]

If we can’t deport illegal immigrants who have final orders of removal, we’re blowing a hole in our immigration system and own legal processes. As Tricia McLaughlin points out in the story, the mother could have left under her own power — and tried to minimize any disruption for her young daughter before a new school year — but sought to stay despite being ordered to leave.

We should wish this family all the best, but they had no right to stay here and had been given a fair opportunity to prove otherwise.